Committed to accelerating chemical transparency across supply chains to consumers, a coalition of over 100 businesses, governments, health care organizations, investors, and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) has joined forces and endorsed the Principles for Chemical Ingredient Disclosure.
 
Beauty companies that endorse the Principles include Alaska Glacial Essentials Skincare, Beautycounter, Credo, Humanscale, Innersense, Juice Beauty, Reckitt Benckiser and many more. Together with a host of government, health care and university endorsers representing over $100 billion in purchasing power, as well as investor endorsers representing $715 billion in assets under management, the coalition aspires to “a marketplace of products made from safe & healthy chemical ingredients.”
 
To this end, the coalition strongly believes that all stakeholders have a fundamental right to know the chemicals in products and the functions of those chemicals. Of particular concern is the presence of chemicals that may harm human health or the environment
 
The goal of this initiative is to find common ground among key stakeholders on chemical ingredient transparency Principles to inform future programs.
 
“We have a lot more in common than we think we do. This is a true collaborative effort. No, we don’t agree on everything, but there are things we do agree on and we can move those forward. If you look back at where we were 10 years ago versus where we are now, it is truly motivational to see what we can do when we partner together,” comments Hal Ambuter, senior director, Regulatory and Government Affairs, Reckitt Benckiser (RB).
 
Summary of the Six Principles
 
The six Principles were designed over the last 18 months to frame the necessary steps for increasing access to information about chemicals in products and their hazards. They are as follows:
 

1. Disclose all intentionally added chemical ingredients.
2. Disclose nonfunctional constituents (i.e., incidental components, breakdown products, and byproducts) that are identified on specified lists of chemicals of concern. This is a general principle to which Signatories agree, though they may hold differing positions on the thresholds for disclosure.
3. Proactively engage supply chains and interested stakeholders to increase full chemical ingredient information disclosure. Manufacturers and retailers need reliable documentation to trace chemical information along supply chains.
4. Advocate for filling data gaps to characterize the hazards of chemicals.
5. Make accurate chemical ingredient information easily accessible to consumers, government agencies, manufacturers, brands, retailers, and others in the supply chain.
6. Support public policies and industry standards that advance the above Principles.

 
An endorsement of the Principles is an agreement to what they are intended to achieve, not that you now achieve them. The hope is that over time a company’s policies will align with and ultimately implement them. 
 
There is no set timescale. This will vary from organization to organization, but the coalition’s hope is that companies will act with a sense of purpose and urgency.
 
Taking Action Based on the Principles
 
“Endorsing the Principles, while a significant step is not a sufficient step. No one or even several companies, NGOs or government agencies endorsing these Principles and implementing them is really sufficient to create the change that is needed to ensure that products enter the marketplace with sufficient information for users to know if they can use those products in a way that meets their sense of safety. Ultimately it is up to the users of these products to determine if they can use the product in a safe and effective way,” explains Martin Wolf, director, Sustainability and Authenticity, Seventh Generation.
 
He adds, “To achieve that is going to require systemic change, a complete change in the way we consider chemical hazards and risks and how we manage them. Systemic change will only happen if there is broad support from the NGO community and broad support from industry and broad support from the public, resulting in meaningful legislative change.”
 
The coalition recommends that a diverse community of stakeholders, including consumers, NGOs, academia, investors, governments, and businesses use these Principles to drive avoidance of chemicals of concern; build trust among users and producers; use chemicals with the most comprehensive chemical hazard profiles; and work to reduce hazardous chemicals and their uses in products, across supply chains, and throughout product lifecycles.